Wednesday, November 2, 2016

What I've been up to lately.

While in the old house, I am enjoying the view out the kitchen window.

First let me say , "No, we have not moved." And, "No, we don't have our old house on the market." That's pretty much how every conversation I have these days starts. Sometimes I feel like I'm eight months pregnant and fielding comments like, "You haven't had that baby yet?!" Believe me, no one wanted to have that baby more or no one wants all of this house stuff to be over with more than I do. It's been three months of total focus night and day on practically nothing but houses and it's getting a little old.

However, I realize that this is a good reason to be tired. A short time ago, we were worrying about cancer surgery and before that we were worrying about a fall my mother had and placing her in a nursing home. So making a late night trip to Lowes to get a new shower diverter because the other one didn't work is not too bad.

We are tying the new floors into the existing floors. The new stain will
have more of a brown tinge and a bit lighter than the old.
Where are we in this moving process? Al, the floor guy, is actually working on the floors now in the new house and hopefully they'll be done by the beginning of next week. He is matching and tying into the hardwoods that are already there and doing a great job. He is truly a craftsman. Anyway, the floors are the key to much of this whole process. Obviously, we can't move much until we have a floor to set it on. And we can't pack up a lot of stuff if we're still using it. And we don't want to move it into all of the construction dust. And some of the things can't be fixed on the old house until we move some of things. So the floors are what much of this process is hinging on.

On other fronts, the bathroom remodel is almost done and should be finished by next week also. It is shaping up very nicely and I think we're going to really like it. After the work is done in there, the contractor will move to the basement to install some new duct work and a bathroom fan. We have finished painting the master bedroom, but the rest of the painting that needs to be done will wait for a later date after we've moved in.

Back at the current house, we are continuing to purge things. Today, I have a pickup scheduled for a large load of things we're giving away including furniture. Among other things, we are prepping rooms for painting with removing wallpaper being the most time consuming.

The most interesting part with the current house work has been talking with stagers about how to set up things for showing. Selling a house these days is all about pictures. People do their first shopping online (that's how we did it) and if you don't have a set of appealing pictures, you won't get them in the door. We hired a stager for a small fee who carefully went through the house and made suggestions on what to take, what to leave, what colors to paint, etc. This is all part of getting good pictures. Not surprisingly, our house is old fashioned especially for the demographic that is moving into the neighborhood right now, young families. In case you are wondering, gray and more gray are the colors of the day. However, since we have an older house, taupe is the color for us. Gone are the days of painting everything white or off-white to sell a house. Gray and taupe are the new whites.

After we had the visit from the first stager, our real estate agent brought another agent, who also stages, and she took a look. Her suggestions were similar to the first with a few exceptions. The conclusion is, while our house is in good shape overall, it need a lot of cosmetic fix ups. None of it is hard work, but all of it time consuming especially when we're trying to do the same thing in another house. So now, we're reworking the budget to see how much of this we can afford to hire out. We want the house on the market. The sooner we can get it on, the sooner we can sell it, and the sooner we can recoup money.

Otherwise, we are enjoying the fall weather and I have decided not to take a trip to deliver some door knobs to the new house this morning before work and am having breakfast with a friend I haven't seen for a while. That's my small attempt at balance.

So I'll see you guys out there in cyberland when I see you. I'll try to keep up with your blogs and comment when I can. And I'll post then and again. Especially when I have something else to talk about other than houses. Hope that's soon.








18 comments:

  1. Oh, I am glad you are seeing progress and have an end game plan. I don't envy you right now, but I am sure I will once you are in your new place and the other house sells!
    It seems if you are 40 or under the only color that "works" is gray.

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    1. While I appreciate gray in others' houses, it's never been the color for me. But then again, I'm definitely over 40. My husband read an interesting quote. No one wants to move into their parent's house. And for a young family, that's definitely what our house would remind them of.

      You're right, no need for envy at this point. But you already know a bit about maintaining two houses with your lake house. Do you still plan to move into your lake house some day?

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  2. You definitely have the right perspective. These are all good problems to have. I wish you well in all of this, and am glad you are taking some time to do pleasant things.

    Loved seeing the deer in the first photo. Will you have deer at your new house?

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    1. I'm not sure about deer at the new house. I haven't seen any evidence of them, but generally they're everywhere, so we'll see. Right now we don't have any one living behind us so the deer have a straight shot from the woods. In the new place, our backyard meets up with several others and they're all fenced. Not as conducive for the deer to visit. I will miss seeing them, but won't miss everything they eat.

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  3. Your photo is gorgeous. Such a peaceful autumn scene.

    Ugh, staging a home. I follow a few home decorating blogs and am aware of the grey wall trend, and I like it, but sometimes I think HGTV has resulted in a lot of younger people having unrealistic expectations of the homes they purchase. I don't know about you, but we bought the best house we could afford and walked into it knowing we would be removing outdated wallpaper and painting the walls, among other updates. We still haven't completely updated our home, as bigger and more important expenses have come along periodically. Replace our furnace or re-carpet the bedroom end of the house? Um, I like heat, thank-you-very-much. Sorry, didn't mean to get on a rant--I just feel like so many people are experiencing entitlement syndrome and sometimes it gets under my skin. But ... in your situation, I'd do what I had to do to move my house along on the market as quickly as possible.

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    1. Yeah, HGTV is giving many people unrealistic expectations. Very few people can afford an architect/decorator to totally remodel their house and if they can afford it, it certainly takes a lot longer than it does on TV.

      We've always moved into houses knowing there would be things to do, including this one, but we're hoping that we can do things a little differently this time. Meaning not waiting so long to fix things that bother us. We have a bad habit of fixing things up to sell that we wished we had done much sooner (years ago) so we could enjoy it. With that being said, it will all take time.

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  4. Love the deer picture and it sounds like progress is being made and that is always good! Those baby steps add up before ya know it :o)

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    1. Hannah, you made a very similar, simple comment last time, that I use all of the time now. "Steady progress is being made." So while most of the time I fell overwhelmed with the process, I remind myself that steady progress is being made.

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  5. What a beautiful view from your window! The new floors will look lovely once they are finished. Sounds like you have a lot of work with getting two houses ready at the same time! Good luck with getting everything done in good time. It'll be all worth it in the end, I'm sure.

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    1. It's been hard picking out a color for the new floors because it will be in every room. However, the floor guy says that they are made from good wood and will look beautiful no matter what we pick. I think he's right, but I asked him anyway if he would tell us if we were picking something that would look bad. He said yes. So I'm looking forward to seeing them done.

      The view of my backyard is definitely something I'm going to miss at the new house. However, one of the reasons we want to move is the current backyard is just too big for us to take care of.

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  6. I'm sure it's a massive pain in the rear, but it actually sounds sorta exciting to me - the opportunity to "make it yours" before you move in rather than trying to do all that remodeling work after you're living there. I sure wish I'd had the money to do some of that sort of work before I moved in, because it might have actually happened! At the rate I'm going my house might actually end up being some sort of a mid-century museum! Hang in there.

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    1. This has been going on so long, you'd think that we were remodeling the whole house, when it actually only the master bath and the floors. The kitchen and screened porch are just gonna have to wait.

      You've got a good momentum going on your house with all of the beetle clean up. You should keep it going with some of your remodeling. We both should take a page from Lois's book who always has a vision for her places and make them happen.

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  7. Love the picture of the deer. You made a good choice to have the work done on the new house before moving in, I feel as if I've been living in a construction zone for two years now. Just today I spent most of my day cleaning up after the plastering was completed in the bathroom. To access the basement the dust was tracked through the entire first floor and it went outside, all over the deck and down the ramps. My neighbors must have thought I was crazy mopping the deck and ramps today. :-) Anyway, once you are all moved in, old house sold as well, you will be able to settle in and not have any worries.

    Speaking of wall colors, this is the first house I've ever painted rooms white. The style of the house seemed to call for white but my real estate son just shook his head and asked me if I'd lost my mind because white is out with the younger buyers/renters today as you were told.

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    1. Even though the new bathroom is a bright blue, our new bedroom is eggshell white. I'm looking for bright and cheery at this point and these colors do that. Gray doesn't say bright and cheery to me.

      Dust is one of the hardest parts of construction, isn't it?

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  8. With so many details to take care of, still, it's a wonder you have time to throw a post together or even look at the deer, lol! As others have said, I don't envy you the work and hassle but it will be so nice for you to be in a house where you know you can live as an older couple. Did you ever get a new furnace for your husband's workshop?

    I'd rather have a white of off-white house so I can paint it the way I want to, I think. I'm glad I don't have to think about all this right now. Do you have a set date by when you want to be completely out of the old house or are you playing it by ear?

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    1. There is not a new furnace for the workshop yet. My husband has been doing research for the what might work best, but other things have been higher priority. I want him to get some kind of heat so he can work out there this winter and get things set up. That task alone is going to take a lot of time and effort.

      We do not have a date that we want to be out of the old house. We are just working as hard as we can and will get out as soon as we can. Today I start contacting moving companies. If we are willing to move in the middle of the week, I don't think we have to have much lead time. At least that's what they told me before.

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  9. The deer are beautiful! What a lot of work you have with the house swap. But you will get there. You'll have that baby and the baby will be fat and happy!

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    1. That baby grew up to be a fine young man. However, there were a few bumps along the way like I expect there will continue to be with the house. But it's all good.

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What do you think?